If love is a crime

How many rivers do we have to cross before we get down from the boat? How many times will you get hurt to find a true love? How many times will I screw up because I am searching for the right guy? How many times will love knock me down?

“If love is a crime, then I am a culprit, an offender punishable by heartbreak.”

I have been hurt so many times and each time, there is always someone to help me stand back on my feet and move on and that same person will also eventually hurt me and leave me for another comforter who will end up mending and breaking my heart. What color is love?

I fell in love for the first time when I was sixteen, he was the same age and we made it through to the third year then one evening, I came to their house, his parents had traveled to Nepal so I knew that he will be alone with his older brother, my mission was simply to give him what he so much desire from me, he had wanted to do it long time but I was scared.

I was scared because I don’t want to get pregnant and I was scared because my father will kill me if he ever find out that such a thing happened, he was a descent Muslim but that day, I made up my mind that I was going to go against my upbringing after all he promised that he will marry me.

My desire was to make him happy so I wore my best cloth, put on my mom’s perfume and elegantly left the house to give myself freely to the slaughter but hardly did I knew that going to him that day would be my first cry for love. I walked in through the living room and went up stair to his room, I was ready and his name was the only word singing in my heart.

Believe me, I walked into his bed room and saw him on bed with my younger sister. My heart broke and I cried for years. I hated both of them although I did not report her to our father because I know that doing so means a death sentence. How can I do that to her? Let Allah be the judge.

I detest guys and I vowed never to give any of them my heart but you see, charm is deceitful and gold is pure. This was how I classified him because he was one of the most famous students in campus and he was liked by many, whenever there was a problem in the campus, he would be at the fore front of settling matters, at a time some mistook him for a cult member because of his strong presence in everything.

He was not scared to stand in front of the VC and tell him the wrongs going on in the campus, he was the very person that helped in the investigation and subsequent arrest of two lectures that extolled money from students for pass mark. I mean, the guy trapped me, he trapped me and I gave him my all but he took my innocence and abandoned me for another babe before we left school.

I had two other relationship before I clocked thirty and both ended with me at the losing side, perhaps I was born to be tricked and jilted, so I decided to give guys capital letter NO and I vowed to rather sleep with a dog instead of a man; yes men are dogs in any case so he showed up on my 31st birthday, the one that broke my principal.

The one I called the bull dog. He broke the walls of my heart and like a blink of the eye, he had me and devoured me, then six months into our super bond, I realized that he was married in Spain where he reside so all those sweet talks, all the promises that I will live in Spain with him were all fallacy.After that heartbreak which almost cost me my life because my Dad knew this guy and accepted him because he was a Muslim.

I left the country to be alone, the only person I can trust was the very first person that betrayed me; my younger sister. Although we pretended in front of our family members that everything was fine but honestly, we don’t talk to each other. Relocating to Senegal was the perfect choice I made and with the help of a close friend, I got a job and devoted my time to my duty. Everything was working as I wanted then the Liberia war broke up and had people from there scattered all over the Africa continent. I was transferred from Saint-Louis to help the inflow of refugees to Dakar and that was where I met him.

He was a refugee from Liberia and I liked him from the moment I saw him, there was a strong chemical between us, he wasn’t looking for a woman but for shelter, he wasn’t looking for sympathy but comfort and I saw it in him. He was the son of a butchered army general, a onetime first class citizen now refugee in Senegal. We began talking and i made sure that he got everything he wanted.

I gave him everything and much more, I took him into my own house, all I wanted was to make it right this time, I told him my life story and he told me his. You see, it didn’t matter to me any more whether he will eventually abandon me because I knew that he will but believe me, I understood that the game has just one rule, take it or leave it, “Love is either you win or you lose” and I am great looser but all I wanted was to make it right and I did everything to make it right.

I did everything to show him how much I wanted him in my life, I wanted to take an oath to show him that I was ready but you see, when it is time, it is time and whatever that will stay will come and will stay.Amidst all we passed through, he did not for one day walk out the door and it is been 20yrs now.

Charlie, if loving you is a crime, let me be wanted, my love, the happiest thing in my life, the father of my four children, the one that showed me the difference between love and lust.

I forgave my sister because she helped me to find my perfect love and she understood because she is godmother to my two daughters.